THEOSOPHIA A Living Philosophy For Humanity
Published every two months under the auspices of Lodge No. 60, American-Canadian
Section, Theosophical Society
(International Headquarters, Covina, California).

Public Lectures second and fourth Sundays of every month,
3:00 P.M.
September 10 "Why Is Reincarnation Necessary?" Boris de Zirkoff.
September 24 "Interpretation of Ancient Myths" Major Hubert
S. Turner.
October 8 "A Philosophy for Everyday Living" Boris de Zirkoff.
October 22 "Destiny's Magic Key" Bertha Blanchard.

Study Classes
Ladies' Class, Textbook: Man in Evolution. First and last Monday
of every month, at 1:30 P.M.
Mens' Class, Textbook: Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy,
Second and fourth Monday of every month, at 8:00 P.M.
Class in The Esoteric Tradition, for men and women. Second and
fourth Thursday of every month, at 8:00 P.M.

SCIENTIFIC
BASIS FOR ETHICSG. de Purucker
Excerpts from Questions We All Ask, Second Series, Nos. 18 and
20.

Evolution is bringing out what is within, unfolding
the latent powers locked up within the deathless center which every human
is at the core of the core of himself. Infinitude lies there; deathlessness
lies there; and therefore the pathway of growth is endless and beginningless.

The way by which to grow is to shed the personal in
order to become impersonal ... To shed, to cast aside, the limited in
order to expand. How can the chick leave the egg without breaking its
shell? How can the inner man expand without breaking the shell of the
lower selfhood? How can the god within manifest itself that god in each
of you, your own divine consciousness until the imperfect, the small,
the constricted, the personal in other words, has been cast aside? It
is in impersonality that lies immortality; in personality lies death.
Therefore expand, grow, evolve, become what you are within! The gods
call to us constantly not in human words, but in those soundless symbols
transmitted to us along the inner ethers which man's heart and soul interpret
as spiritual instinct, aspiration, love, self-forgetfulness; and the
whole import of what these voiceless messages are, is: "Come up
higher!"

Nature is not mocked. Her fundamental essence is consciousness
and her fundamental law is reaction consequences. What you put into the
ground of your character, you will reap; what you sow into yourself by
thought and will and feeling, makes your character. Thus you build yourself
through the ages; and if you do evil to some other, that evil will come
back to you. You know the old saying: "Curses come home to roost." They
do, indeed.

Here is the scientific basis for ethics. Ethics are
not mere conventions. There are indeed conventional ethics; but the essence
of ethics, the fundamental principle that right is right and wrong is
wrong, that dishonor is wrong and that honor is right, that just dealing
is right and that unjust dealing is wrong these fundamental things which
I call ethics, are based on Nature's fundamental law.

Sow beauty into your character by your thoughts and
acts, and you will become beautiful. Sow love by your aspirations and
thoughts and acts, and love will build your character to be lovely, and
you will meet the guerdon of love, which is love. Be lovely and you will
be loved; be hateful, and the very fact of your thinking and feeling
hate, distorts your character, twists it. The torsion is tremendous,
because your will and feeling are with it, and you will return with a
twisted and distorted character, which may even manifest in a twisted
and distorted body, the natural reaction on the physical body of the
indwelling energy of your character.

Sow love, and reap it; sow hate, and reap it; sow goodwill,
deeds of kindness and brotherhood and you will receive goodwill, and
deeds of kindness and brotherhood. Be peaceful, and you shall receive
peace; be kindly, and kindliness will be your guerdon. Forgive, and forgiveness
will he yours. Strive, and you will gain; aspire, and what you aspire
to you shall reap; [4] for within you dwells an indomitable will
springing from the very heart of the Universe; and to a man who uses
his will aright and who uses his will with a will, naught can oppose
his progress. If he fails, it is because his will lacks practice; and
if he uses that will for evil purposes, if he abuses it, Nature will
react upon him exactly according to what he did and gave.

Use your divine part, that spiritual will use it with
a will on the side of right, of love, of peace, of brotherhood, of happiness
to others. Nature's reaction upon you will bring back to you all that
you have sown. Ethics are man's way of expressing his consciousness of
the harmony and symmetry and beauty inherent in the Universe.

You are gods, my Brothers; every one of you in the core
of the core of your being is a god, a divine entity ... You are Children
of Cosmic Space. For the essence of you is Boundless Infinitude the All.

*

THE
THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENTWilliam Quan Judge
(From an article in The Path, New York, August, 1895.)

There is a very great difference between the Theosophical
Movement and any Theosophical Society. The Movement is moral, ethical,
spiritual, universal, invisible save in effect, and continuous. A Society
formed for theosophical work is a visible organization, an effect, a
machine for conserving energy and putting it to use; it is not nor can
it be universal, nor is it continuous. Organized Theosophical bodies
are made by men for their better cooperation, but, being mere outer shells,
they trust change from time to time as human defects come out, as the
tines change, and as the great underlying spiritual movement compels
such alterations.

The Theosophical Movement being continuous, it is to
be found in all times and in all nations. Wherever thought has struggled
to be free, wherever spiritual ideas, as opposed to forms and dogmatism,
have been promulgated, there the great movement is to be discerned. Jacob
Boehme's work was part of it, and so also was the Theosophical Society
of over one hundred years ago [sic] ; Luther"s reformation
must be reckoned as a portion of it; and the great struggle between Science
and Religion, clearly portrayed by Draper, was every bit as much a motion
of the Theosophical Movement as is the present Society of that name indeed
that struggle, and the freedom thereby gained for Science, were really
as important in the advance of the world, as are our different organizations.
And among political examples of the movement is to be counted the Independence
of the American colonies, ending in the formation of a great nation,
theoretically based on Brotherhood. One can therefore see that to worship
an organization, even though it be the beloved theosophical one, is to
fall down before Form, and to become the slave once more of that dogmatism
which our portion of the Theosophical Movement, the T.S., was meant to
overthrow.

Some members have worshiped the so-called"Theosophical
Society," thinking it to be all in all, and not properly perceiving
its de facto and piecemeal character as an organization nor that
it was likely that this devotion to [5] mere form would lead to
a nullification of Brotherhood at the first strain. And this latter,
indeed, did occur with several members. They even forgot, and still forget,
that H.P. Blavatsky herself declared that it were better to do away with
the Society rather than to destroy Brotherhood, and that she herself
declared the European part of it free and independent. These worshipers
think that there must be a continuance of the old form in order for the
Society to have an international character.

But the real unity and prevalence, and the real internationalism,
do not consist in having a single organization. They are found in the
similarity of aim, of aspiration, of purpose, of teaching, of ethics.
Freemasonry a great and important part of the true Theosophical Movement
is universally international; and yet its organizations are numerous,
autonomous, sovereign, independent ...

When the Theosophical Society was young and small, it
was necessary that it should have but one government for the whole of
it. But now that it has grown wide and strong, having spread among nations
so different from each other as the American, the English, the Spanish,
the Swedish and others in Europe, and the Hindu, it is essential that
a change in the outward form be made. This is that it become like the
Freemasons independent in government wherever the geographical or national
conditions indicate that necessity. And that this will he done in time,
no matter what certain persons may say to the contrary, there is not
the slightest doubt. * (* It is interesting to note in this connection
the insistence of our late Leader, Dr. de Purucker, upon the autonomy
and self-Government of all the National Sections of our Society, as the
best condition of healthy growth through individual initiative. Ed.
Theos.)

The American Group, being by geographical and other
conditions outwardly separate, began the change so as to be in government
free and independent, but in basis, aspiration, aim, and work united
with all true Theosophists.

We have not changed the work of H.P.B.; we have enlarged
it ...

Those who desire to keep up H.P.B.'s war against dogmatism
will applaud and encourage the American movement because their liberated
minds permit; but those who do not know true Theosophy, nor see the difference
between forms and the soul of things, will continue to worship Form and
to sacrifice Brotherhood to a shell.

The author of this article is a young Negro, born and
educated in Los Angeles, Calif. He has worked for ten years in the field
of radio. Personally acquainted with racial prejudice and discrimination,
this festering disease of the soul affecting selfish and parochial minds,
he has acquired a spiritual strength which results from opposition courageously
met, and has devoted his life to the promotion of interracial understanding.
He donates freely the inspiration of his pen to local papers promoting
goodwill among various races. The Editor is proud to count Horace Willard
among his friends. Ed. Theos.

Upon the request of a very good friend, I sit and write
about the "Brotherhood of man." To write convincingly about
a subject so much discussed and so seldom practiced, is not easy. So
many talk and so few do that the subject in itself is abstract and ambiguous
as well as lacking in substance.

Practically the only true followers of brotherhood are
children; the younger they are the more fond of their playmates and the
less conscious of race. Maybe because when we're young we are recently
from God and therefore closer to God. In my youth I had the happy experience
of enjoying a healthy full childhood, of what so many adults of today
term "true racial understanding." But we didn't call it that
then. I just palled around with Pete, because I liked Pete and he liked
me. Then there was Joe, a Mexican boy whose immigrant parents moved in
our neighborhood soon after I could walk. We both liked Joe and evidently
Joe liked us. The three of us, Pete of French-Irish extraction, Joe the
son of Mexican immigrants and I a Negro, were the best of friends. A
strange threesome we made in our later years. Joe with his oily black
hair and round chubby face, Pete of the sandy curls and I with kinky
hair and dark brown skin.

Like most children we had two paramount pleasures in
life, food and play, and together we enjoyed them to the fullest. Over
at Pete's house we had delicious apple pie with pieces of warmed cheese
on top and ice-cold milk to wash it down. As Pete's mother put it: "The
milk was to give us strong teeth to chew another piece of pie the next
day." And Joe's mother was always good for a handout of highly-spiced
large red beans wrapped in a blanket-like Mexican roll called "tortillas." Garnished
with chopped meats, this was exquisite. My mom was famous for her hot
biscuits, golden brown fried chicken and candied sweet potatoes, and
Negro mothers get a parental joy from feeding and caring for any child
that comes along. From house to house we panhandled until our little
tummies ached; in the streets, vacant lots or flower gardens, we played
until six little legs wouldn't carry three little bodies any further
and there we went to sleep.

Three wards of God free from man's greatest curse, race
prejudice. But that was to come later, for we were destined in the ways
of man, and man's education deals too much with prejudice both in the
school and at home. Or else how would a child learn? When we entered
senior high school our friendship was slowly breaking off. Nothing apparent,
we were just drifting apart. This disturbed me to such a point that I
asked my father why Pete, Joe and myself didn't get on as we used to.
My dad said, "You're arriving at your adolescent period, son. And
American adolescence is when one becomes sex-conscious and race-conscious!" And
so we grew wiser academically. We learned that Lincoln freed the slaves
and the slaves were black like me; we also learned that most of the peoples
of Mexico [7] were poor and indolent and very few had an education,
there's where Joe's parents come from. I knew how he felt when these
subjects were under discussion; I felt the same way when the teacher
talked about Negro slaves. They didn't tell us about Benito Juarez, the
great liberator of Mexico, or Booker T. Washington, the Negro educator.

At home our education of hatred and prejudice was also
carried on. Unconsciously, but nevertheless carried on! I was told that
my grandparents were sold as slaves, beaten and killed by white slave-owners.
So naturally I developed a dislike for whites. Joe was told the reason
his people were so poor; white oil men and land-grabbers had robbed and
exploited the Mexicans of everything they had. This was not wholly true,
but Joe believed it. Pete, on the other hand, was taught that his was
the more popular color and his grandparents were rulers, the darker races
inferior. These tales were fed into our young ears innocently enough,
in bedtime stories, nursery rhymes and the many other ways home education
is administered to children, but they were just as effective as if they
were ground out by a modern propaganda machine. Thus we were educated
at home and at school! On graduation day we stood in cap and gown and
received our diplomas, and so well were we educated that we scarcely
spoke to each other.

Today the world is at war. A war that was caused by
the same prejudice and hatred that was forced upon me and my two friends.
We have hopes of making this a better world to live in when the peace
is signed. "We will make a peace that will last forever," I
hear postwar planners say. "At the next conference table there will
be a program of peace so tremendous, invoked upon the world, that it
will he impossible to enter into another war for a thousand years!"

This may be true, but I don't believe it. The next world
peace may he drawn up at a conference table, but it will never be carried
out until we have a meeting of the minds of the masses. People must again
become like little children, get close to God, forget creed, color and
religion, and love our fellow man because in our fellow man is he who
represents us all. Then and only then will we enjoy true Brotherhood
of Man.

*

FEEDING
THE HUNGRYGrace Finlayson

Today more persons are hungry than there have been for
ages past. And it is for those who have food, to give to those who have
not. But what is the kind of sustenance for which the hungry crave?

Man is much more than his gross physical body. He has
many Selves ranging from the divine to the material. Which of these Selves
is most in need of food? Surely not the body which we are taught is the
lowest of our composite nature.

Too long has man been kept in ignorance. Today many
are no longer satisfied with the pap which has been fed them: the pap
which has dulled their intellect and prevented them from "eating
of the fruit of the tree of knowledge." Many are now eagerly searching
for that which will wake them up. They are wearied of the sugarcoated
sedatives that have put them to sleep. They are eager to know what life
is all about and where they are going and how to proceed there [8] in
the best and most efficient way.

The story is told of a traveler on a train of whom the
conductor asked, "Where are you going?" and the man replied, "I
do not know." "Why are you traveling?" the man was asked
arid he replied, "I do not know." The conductor enquired, "Who
are you?" and again the man answered, "I do not know." Think
of the millions today who would have given the same answers. They cannot
tell where they are going, why they are traveling or who they are.

Fortunately, thousands are waking from their lethargy
and are seeking the nourishment that will satisfy their whetted appetites.
Life will hold a meaning and purpose if they are told, that each man
has within himself a spark of Divinity, that he is traveling an aeon-long
journey toward perfection, and that he has lived many, many lives, endeavoring
to unfold this god-spark, that he also may ultimately attain godhood.

If these starving thousands are givens but the two simple
facts of karma and reincarnation, a whole new life will open before them.
Wars will be impossible when all men fully understand the law of karma:
the law of which St. Paul spoke when he said: "Whatsoever a man
soweth, that shall he also reap." Would the peoples of the earth
be so unintelligent as to commit wholesale murder if they realized that
the seeds of war will most certainly produce the fruits of another war,
for which they will have to pay either in this or some future life?

Those of us who have been given these teachings are
like guests at a great banquet table. How shall we show our appreciation?
Are we going to sit still and gorge on spiritual food, absorbing all
that we can for ourselves alone, or shall we rise and seek those whom
we can invite to share the food from this abundant table?

On every side we are surrounded by hungry Souls. The
person sitting next to us on a streetcar or bus may be so Hungry for
an answer to his problems, that his entire life might be changed for
the better if he is given some of the food that sustains and satisfies.

It is easy to drop a word or a hurt that will start
the mind of a stranger thinking. Simple remarks like, "Well, in
my last life I must have done so-and-so," or "In my next life
I'm determined to do so-and-so," will invariably bring forth the
query, "Oh,
do you believe in reincarnation?" What better opening could present
itself?

To my mind, the most zealous aim of every true theosophist
should be to do all in his power to get these wisdom-teachings out into
the world, and never miss an opportunity to feed all starving then, women
and children who must, sooner or later, be fed the apple of true knowledge,
as symbolized in the Bible allegory. [9]

*

"THEOSOPHY
SPEAKS"Reincarnation
Transcribed Radio Broadcast of December 26, 1943, over Station KMPC,
Beverly Hills, California.

Announcer: "Theosophy Speaks!" ... "Light for
the Mind - Love for the Heart - Understanding for the Intellect."

"Theosophy Speaks" will undertake to answer
some of the many questions in our minds regarding life and death, and
will endeavor to show that Man cannot have a true comprehension of ethics
and morals without understanding his proper place in the Universe, his
Origin, his real Nature, and his Destiny. Last Sunday, in discussing
man's real Nature, we brought out that Man is not merely the body which
identifies him to others. That, in reality, he is a complex being with
seven principles or levels of consciousness. These are: the Physical,
Astral, Energy, Emotional, Mental, Spiritual and Divine. That
he uses all seven phases of his nature as tools for experience in his
evolutionary pilgrimage in the realms of matter. And just as a thermometer
indicates decrees of temperature, so do our emotions, thoughts, and actions
indicate on which level of our nature we are functioning. Also, that
the purpose of life is to bring all of these seven levels of consciousness
under the domination of the spiritual and divine parts of our real Nature.
Today, realizing that many people are not only curious, but seriously
interested in Reincarnation. We begin a series of four dialogues
on this subject. Our Scene: A cheerful, smoke-filled library.
The host and two friends visit as they wait for Sunday dinner. One of
the
guests suddenly interrupts the conversation ...

HAL: For half all hour now we've beers talking politics
and economics subjects we discuss every day. I want to learn something
about Reincarnation. Been seeing intimations of it in movies, books,
poetry, and so forth and I'm actually getting curious about it.

BILL: All I know about it is that I don't believe it
besides there's no proof for it.

TOM: Neither is there any proof against it, Bill.

BILL: It's defeatist fatalistic!

TOM: On the contrary, old boy, it takes courage to believe
in Reincarnation because you must face yourself honestly.

BILL: Only longhairs believe in it!

TOM: (Amused) Is that so? ... It'll probably
come as a shock to you then to learn that three-fourths of the world's
population believe in it and these three-fourths include people in all
walks of life. Here in the Western World, what would you say if I told
you that there are doctors, scientists, lawyers and preachers, who think
and say that Reincarnation is a fact and that there is much proof? Why,
Bill, the very fact that man intuitively knows that there are reserves
of power and possibilities within him that are seeking expression the
fact that nearly everyone yearns to be something which he senses within
the very urge to a better life is our daily PROOF that man has a great
destiny a destiny that each man achieves for himself. It takes courage
to face yourself honestly and say: IT IS UP TO ME though it takes me
aeons of time and many lives.

HAL: But how would you briefly define Reincarnation?

TOM: Reincarnation is a phase of the Law of Re-imbodiment.
Atoms, stars, planets, universes, galaxies all re-imbody themselves.
Human beings, having bodies of flesh, reincarnate. The word "reincarnation" means
to re-inflesh.

BILL: You mean everything re-imbodies?

TOM: Yes periodically. Nature's laws which might also
be called "nature's HABITS" affect all entities in Nature.
You see, Bill, one of the biggest handicaps we have is the tendency to
look upon man as merely [10] a product of PHYSICAL evolution.
It has the effect of discounting man's spiritual nature. And the result
of this is a horror of death. How can anybody be happy or progressive
if he believes that death ends all? Theosophy says that man is a deathless,
spiritual being using body, emotions and mind as vehicles of expression
and experience in the material world.

HAL: Oh yes, you told us about that last week. You said
the body, our vitality, our emotions and desires and our power to think
were our SERVANTS.

TOM : That's right, Hal. You see, Theosophy says that
there is no such thing as dead matter. Everything in the Kosmos has some
form, or some degree, of life and energy. Now, where there is life,
there is action. Right?

BILL: Of course. Even in so small a thing as the atom,
the amount of energy in it is staggering.

TOM: Isn't it logical, then, that where there is action there
is bound to be fatigue?

HAL: Well, I know that at night I'm so tired after a
busy day that I have to go to sleep to recuperate!

TOM: Why do you have to recuperate?

Hal: So I'll have the vitality to carry on my next day's
activities.

TOM: Exactly. And that's why we say that Reincarnation
is a NECESSITY. After about seventy odd years a human being is tired,
life has worn out his body. And his soul has had just as much experience
as it can stand at one time. So ... body

and soul need rest. The man throws off his worn-out
body and goes into another sphere to RECUPERATE. Then when the soul is
refreshed
after a long period of rest, it is ready and

prepared even eager to resume its activities. So it
is born again on this earth in anew body.

BILL: Just a minute, Tom. You said, "he goes off
into another sphere to recuperate." I don't like such vagueness.
WHERE does he go?

TOM: First you tell me where you go when you sleep.

BILL: (Laughs) To bed.

TOM: (Laugh) Your body is stretched out on a
bed, yes. But the reason it is inert is because you, its tenant, have
gone off somewhere. When you return and take possession again, your body
becomes animated again. Now, when you temporarily left your body in sleep,
where did you go?

BILL: (Laugh) I asked you first, Tom!

TOM: It certainly must have been to another plane or
sphere of consciousness, Bill. Because life or consciousness is continuous.
There is no such thing actually, as BIRTH and DEATH. Just varying kinds
of LIFE . . . We are born into one kind of life and we die into another
kind of life. Life is continuous therefore, consciousness, whether on
one plane or another, is continuous. In fact, we can say that sleep is
incomplete death and death is complete sleep.

HAL: Say, that's very interesting. (Meditatively ...)
Sleep is incomplete death death is complete sleep.

TOM: You see, in sleep the withdrawal of your consciousness
to another plane is only partial and temporary . . . therefore, you can
return to your body and resume daily activities. But in death, the withdrawal
of your consciousness is complete and so your body disintegrates. At
any rate, the sleeping period and the death period are both for the purpose
of rest and recuperation.

HAL: As far as I'm concerned, Tom, you make sense. But,
why do we have to come back HERE to Earth?

TOM: Why were you born here in lire FIRST PLACE? It
wasn't blind, accidental happen-chance! Nature doesn't work that way.
Logically, there is something we must [11] accomplish in this
particular spot called Earth. Let's say that the Earth is a school where
there are various subjects we must master in order to evolve, or graduate,
into a higher sphere of life. You start in the first grade you study,
learn, then you are given tests, if you've done your work well, you pass
into the second grade and so on. BUT, if you fail in your work, you must
remain in that same grade until you have learned your lessons. The reason
we come back here is because the things the have to learn HERE cannot
be learned any other place or we'd be THERE instead of here. A farmer
doesn't plant seeds in one place and then travel miles away to another
farm to harvest his crops! We have to come back here to reap the harvest
on the spot where the seeds were sown.

TOM: Your scene of action, Hal, until you have mastered
all the challenges and problems the Earth has to offer is right on this
planet. Why go to another place when you haven't been a success here?
You see, your unfinished duties and obligations, the unlearned lessons
and unsatisfied ambitions PULL YOU back here. We call it magnetic attraction.

BILL: Well, I for one don't want to come back. I'd just
as soon enjoy life and then be snuffed out.

HAL: I guess everybody would but evidently Nature doesn't
work that way.

TOM: Your way would be easy, Bill but it's not very
courageous, is it? You see, fellows, the NEED is to tell people of their
SIGNIFICANCE in the evolutionary plan. We need a larger view of the purpose
and destiny of the human race. You and I didn't spring into being at
the MOMENT OF BIRTH! Theosophy is the only thing I've come across that,
to

my mind at least, satisfactorily EXPLAINS the riddles
and inequalities of life. It shows man's relation to the Universe. In
fact, man is a pilgrim with a Spiritual origin and a Divine Destiny.

BILL: Well, it certainly is a different conception than
most evolutionists have.

TOM: Yes it is. But you see, Bill, the materialistic
idea of evolution leaves out man's Spiritual Nature and also the spiritual
aspect of Nature itself. And you simply must take it into consideration
because the cure of Nature is essentially Spiritual.

HAL: As you were talking, Tom, I got the feeling of
tremendous periods of time. Endless, almost.

TOM: Nature works slowly, and continuously repeats itself.
Evolution requires TIME and depends on CONTINUITY. We are evolving, growing
units in an evolving universe, and need time plenty of time to reach
our goal. That's why we say REINCARNATION IS A NECESSITY.

BILL: I agree that evolution takes time billions of
years perhaps. But I still think that people evolve through their descendants
and not individually.

TOM: Bill, have you ever asked why people are so different?
Why are some so rich in money and so poor in kindliness why are some
born with such poor health why do opportunities come to some people and
not to others why do some have more will power than others why are some
born with tendencies to evil which they are given little time to outgrow?
Why, the inequalities of life are in themselves enough to embitter
the heart and destroy initiative!

TOM: It is, Bill, to a certain extent. But think a moment.
Heredity and environment are consequences, not causes. The answer
lies much deeper than that. There are inequalities in people of the same
heredity [12] and environment. One child in the family will he
stolid, another brilliant. One will have perfect health and his brother
he born an idiot. One will submit to his environment, and his brother
will raise himself out of it and become President!

HAL: Now you're saying something! Everybody wonders
why that is.

TOM: It's because we've all taken up where we left off
before. Some have learned their lessons and passed on to the next grade
while others failed the tests and must do them again. Some have wasted
time and are born without talent and just plod along. Others acquired
a high degree of perfection along certain lines and are born perhaps
musicians, geniuses, prodigies. We might have a lifelong dream of a career
that was never possible or other unsatisfied longings. These are energies.
Somewhere sometime they must develop and bear fruit.

HAL: That must he what the philosophers mean by "the
hunger of the human heart."

TOM: Yes. And only human life can satisfy it.

BILL: I know, but I still think these "unsatisfied
longings" bear fruit, as you put it, in our children.

TOM: A child of yours cannot complete your evolution.
He has his own you have your own. We don't enter a university and expect
to leave it, an educated person, in one term.

TOM: Neither can we master the school of life in one
lifetime. It's foolish even to suppose it. One seventy-odd year life
is not enough.

HAL: Do you think we develop talents in PAST lives which
are our easiest lines of effort NOW?

TOM: Yes. Then too, you've developed HABITS, good and
bad, which are the easiest lines of effort. For instance, take a man
who dies a drunkard's death

HAL: (Laughs) And we certainly cat talk about
a drunkard during dinner, can we?

All laugh ...

TOM: Tell you what you're invited to dine with ME, next
week, boys. And we'll go into a few more details. That is, if you want
to.

HAL: Yes, I can make it.

BILL: That's a splendid idea.

*

MAN
AND THE INVISIBLE WORLDSDella A. Pierce
(Condensed from a talk given before a Study-Class.)

The Universe, structurally, is made up of planes or
spheres, visible and invisible, extending endlessly in the direction
of Spirit on the one hand, and of increasing materiality on the other.
In this evolutionary pattern moves "little man" somewhere between
gross materiality and ethereal spirituality, "muddling" his
way through every experience on endless planes and worlds.

The evolving entity, in whatever form it may be manifesting,
whenever it has finished a cycle of experience enters a higher plane
and goes through a similar cycle, but on a higher plane of growth, in
the Cosmic Hierarchy. In this new cycle of experience he is a beginner,
just as our new personality of every incarnation is first a child in
its development on this physical globe. [13]

All beginners studying this truth wonder why we do not
make faster progress. But when we remember that Cosmic Life works through
endless stages and degrees of substances and forces, then we realize
that this growth is one of expansion of consciousness and sensory
perceptions. In other words, when the Human Life-Wave has finished this
present world-systems. Consciousness, in its bloom, so-to-speak, into
entities that would appear godlike to us, at our present stage of evolution.

This is the destiny not only of man but of everything
that lives, endless growth through endless time to learn firsthand everything
in innumerable world-systems. Consciousness, in its continuous expansion,
must do so self-consciously, with complete awareness of its own growth.
Pure consciousness is free of all limitations. It manifests according
to the space or sphere which it infills. It call be Cosmic or electronic,
so to say because in its own essence it cannot be measured or limited.
Some consciousness on an electron may have thoughts similar to our divine
thoughts. This is so because all forms of manifested substance are, ultimately,
offsprings of Cosmic Intelligence; every mathematical point in the Universe
is in-filled with Cosmic Consciousness, because rooted in it from all
eternity.

We humans are of course still very imperfect in our
evolutionary growth. Beings on other planets of the Solar System are
more advanced and think diviner thoughts than we do. Beings inhabiting
the Sun how strange this must sound in the ears of accepted physical
science! are thinking godlike thoughts because their consciousness has
reached godlike or Solar expansion.

Just as the Universal Life or Consciousness works through
and holds together our own Home Universe, as astronomers call it, so
the life or vital-currents in man's physical and astral structure is
the lower aspect of that vital, cohesive, something which holds all of
man's
constitution together as a Unit or Organism.

There is an entire Universe within the human body. It
has its worlds, its planes, and it is inhabited by millions of cells,
grouped into "kingdoms" and "races," such as bone-cells,
nerve-cells, tissue-cells, what not. Our conscious Self is the ruler
or god of this system. Likewise, the Suns or Stars, planets and satellites,
nebulae and star-clusters, are organ and structural parts of a Universal
Organism, composed of all the substances and forces of a Universe. Our
own life is merely an integral part of that infinite life throbbing through
the arteries and veins of Cosmic Space. Man evolves between two Infinities:
in the direction of Cosmic magnitudes, and in the direction of the infinitesimals.

All the great and inspired Poets and Philosophers of
history have voiced the Truth that the "World Soul" permeates
everything. It is but another way of saying that the Supreme Self of
any Hierarchy infills it throughout and permeates it with its Life. That "Highest" dwells
in every man that is born. This is true ancient Pantheism: the belief,
the intuition that back of all things there is a Divine Essence that
issues innumerable multitudes of rays, life-consciousness-rays. That
Essence being the Spiritual Sun from which all Universes flow forth into
being,
and into which they will all eventually return.

*

If you think you are right, and can tell the reasons
why, do not worry over what people will think. Do what your head and
conscience dictate. If you cannot say correctly what you think, you cannot
think correctly. Joseph Stalin. [14]

*

THOUGHTS
BY THE WAYSIDE

Sitting on a hilltop one day, engrossed in silent contemplation
of a view that embraced the majestic expanse of a tranquil ocean on one
side and the silent grandeur of a mountain range on the other; a thought
kept flashing into mind Tranquility, that is of the essence of Nature's
Ways.

Whether it be the sprouting seed, or the slowly rising
mountain range, Serenity Tranquility Calmness reigns. Even the wild animal
life that abounds, is governed by the same rules; accentuated, but not
denied by sporadic quarrels and fights, indulged in by individual members
of its varied species. Man is like that also.

Then, following through came the flash: Then why is
it that man alone, the highest manifestation of life on this planet,
is yet the only form of life that seems to lack Tranquility? How rare
it is to find a single human being who lives serenely, remains tranquil
at all times and preserves a calm attitude under all circumstance!

In fact, one has to admit. Confusion Disorder Agitation
seem to he the normal living of this so-called Lord of Creation Man.
Surely the Divine Intelligences that must he behind all creations, did
not endow
Man with a self-conscious mind and in return rob him of the blessings.
vouchsafed all other created forms?

Now, here is one of the great benefits of silent contemplation,
especially when surrounded by nothing but Serenity Tranquility Calmness,
which of course means sitting somewhere by The Wayside. It is this: Answers
just come to the most perplexing of questions. And so it was in this
case. It is the great abuse of the Gift of Tongues that is responsible
for man's isolation from the Tranquility enjoyed by all other living
beings. It is the ceaseless chatter, the wagging tongues, and the discordant
voices, as well as the disturbing mass of the written word, all beamed
at creating Confusion, establishing Disorder and inculcating Agitation,
that is responsible for the lack of Tranquility in our daily lives.

Remember, I said it was the abuse, I did not say the
use, of the Gift of Tongues that is responsible. Words have been called "The
winged messengers of thought." Then, many of these messengers, must
have lost their wings, like the Dodo bird, which is also why they have
died out. For, just listen at any time to the eternal clatter of conversation
you hear around you, wherever you go, at any time, in the busy marts
of Man, or in the salons of a social gathering, and try to find even
a vestige of a thought behind the continuous flow of words, words, words.

Science tells us that all bodily growth occurs during
the sleeping hours. Perhaps that is because the tongues are stilled in
sleep and the many foot-pounds of energy wasted in idle chatter, that
is so exhausting to the chatterer, as well as the chatteree, in sleep
can go about their duly ordained task and rehabilitate the Godly Form
we use. Any public speaker will tell you that an hour's address is as
exhausting as several hours of physical labor. The former drains the
nervous system, the latter wears down the muscles. Is it any wonder we
have so many nervous people around us?

Then why the Gift of Tongues in the first place? Obviously,
the answer is, as Man was given a Mind, it was intended as a means to
express constructive thought alone. Man has preferred to use it, for
the most part, to express Destructive Thought alone. Therefore CONFUSION
reigns.

MORAL: Internal Tranquility at all times, is the pathway
to Peace, and Understanding, and that's Contemplative Theosophy.

The Wayfarer. [Hubert S. Turner] [15]

*

THE
CASE FOR ATLANTISBoris de Zirkoff

Students of Theosophy are grateful to our friend and
veteran Theosophist, Dr. Charles J. Ryan, of Int. Hdqrs., for his recently
published essay modestly entitled "Notes on the Place of Atlantis
in World Evolution" (Theos. Univ. Series, No. 5, 1944). These are
in reality more than just "Notes," as the pamphlet covers in
its 25 pages important facts connected with submerged continents, and
is, without question, the most valuable and authoritative outline of
what is actually meant by "Atlantis" in Theosophical terminology,
its place in the evolutionary history of the Earth, and the best-founded
evidence for the support of this ancient tradition. Dr. Ryan's paper
is invaluable for theosophical speakers when attempting to deal with
this popular and captivating subject.

The author brings forward geographical, geological,
biological and allied factors which cannot he explained without the former
existence of the vast continental system of Atlantis. He reviews the
teaching of the orderly succession of Cycles in Nature, giving hints
of the probable inversion of the poles of the Earth, and its bearing
upon the submergence and rise of continents. A bird's-eye-view of Rounds
and Races follows with a suggested explanation why the "primitive" tribes
possess highly complicated languages and a knowledge of occult forces
and their usage.

Special attention is drawn to the vital distinction
between the Theosophical teaching of the antiquity of Atlantis, and that
of those anthropologists who accept the probability of vanished civilizations.
This deserves the most careful attention of the reader. Atlantis should
be regarded as a system of continental masses that covered various parts
of the Earth and not as a mere island somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.
This is another very common error.

The fascinating subject of the actual age of Atlantis
is carefully gone into, the reasons for the disintegration of its civilizations,
and the waves of emigrations which left it for other, then rising, parts
of the Globe. Dr. Ryan discusses the antiquity of civilizations in general;
he points out the confusion and uncertainty existing about this among
modern scientists; the magnificence of some of the remains of early cultures,
followed here and there by what appears to be abject barbarism; very
telling factors and evidences are brought together.

Dr. Ryan's essay should he highly recommended to all
students, and those who, while not directly interested in Theosophy,
love the study of antiquity and of the evolutionary history of the Earth.
As far as our speakers are concerned and let it he stated without any
unkind criticism in mind they cannot he pardoned any longer for confused,
erratic or misleading statements on the subject of Atlantis, on the alibi
that H.P. Blavatsky's teachings in The Secret Doctrine are very
sketchy and seemingly contradictory. With Dr. Ryan's pamphlet at hand,
and with supplementary study of available material, any speaker can deliver
a lecture on Atlantis which will have scientific value and spiritual
worth.

In our own fieldwork, we are constantly discovering
people who have been for many years assiduous readers of Dr. Ryan's scientific
and occult articles in Theosophical magazines, and who have even made
collections of them. So we feel we voice the feeling of many students
when expressing the hope that our good friend, Dr. C. J. Ryan, will continue
to give us valuable material from his more than half-a-century of theosophical
studies, through the medium of his experienced and inspired pen. [16]

These and other books and pamphlets may be obtained from
Lodge No. 60, 500 South Gramercy Place, Los Angeles 5, California.

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